How Gay Men Saved Us From Mpox
For weeks, the same awkward scene played out again and again in sexually transmitted infection clinics across the United States.
Half-naked gay men stood with their pants around their ankles while clinicians crouched between their legs, swabs at the ready.
The clinicians were covered head-to-toe in hazmat chic: gowns, gloves, face shields and N95 respirators. The men were covered in something much worse: painful lesions, on their genitals, their anuses and sometimes even their faces and limbs.
It was July of 2022, just last summer, and an outbreak of mpox — formerly known as monkeypox — was in full swing. From a handful of cases in a few cities in early May, the outbreak surged to more than 16,000 cases in 75 countries and territories just two months later.
